Outdoor Theatre at the Castle

 The Three Inch Fools will be performing tomorrow (Sunday), with an essential guide to how to keep your head in a Tudor Court!

The Secret Diary of Henry VIII follows young Henry through fighting the French, re-writing religion, and marrying all those wives!

It's an outdoor performance, so the audience has to bring their own seats - and picnics are welcome from 6pm, with the performance starting at 7pm.

Tickets are around £20, with children half price, but they are offering a 10% discount.  Tickets are available through the Hay Castle website.

Hay Music Festival

 The box office is open for the ninth Hay Music Festival - a weekend of concerts, films and discussions from Friday September 13th to Sunday September 15th.

There's even a whole Festival ticket, costing £105, to cover all the events apart from the Hay Remembers guided walk and the two films, which are paid for separately.

One of the films, Testimony, is a life of Shostakovich starring Ben Kingsley, and the other is The Death of Stalin, Armando Iannucci's dark comedy, so there's a definite Russian theme to the festival this year.  Music by Shostakovich is included in most of the concerts and there's also a lecture/discussion about the composer.

The concerts include the Fitzwilliam String Quartet and Sinfonia Cymru string quartet at St Mary's Church as well as a piano and cello concert.

Meanwhile at the Castle there's an experimental composer performing The Inside-Out Piano.

All the details and ticket prices are on the Hay Music Trust website.

h.Art in Hay

 It's time for the h.Art brochure to appear again.  I picked up mine in Hereford this morning.

The h.Art week starts on Saturday 7th September, and happens at venues right across the county.  All sorts of art is included, and artists open their studios to the public as well as putting on exhibitions.

Just across the river from Hay we have Cabalva Farm Gallery at Whitney-on-Wye, showing paintings and sculptures from five artists, including Sally Matthews, and at Cabalva House there is a working pottery studio, with work from eight different potters, and the offer of tea and cake in the walled garden.

Larchwood Studio on Racquety Farm, on the road into Hay, has an exhibition of Maureen Richardson's work - she is a renowned paper maker, and there are also paintings in oils, up-cycling, ceramics, Japanese woodblock print making, blown glass sculpture, floral art and stained glass.  They also have a licenced cafe/restaurant.

In Hay itself there's Oil and Oak on the end of Castle Street, with a variety of local artists. 

Tucked away near the Clock Tower at 15 Broad Street there's an exhibition by Elena Underhill of watercolours and sketches.  She has several pictures of the River Wye, and said that if she sells any of them a percentage of the profits will go to Friends of the River Wye to buy testing kits for the citizen scientists.  At the moment she is one of the three artists who have a sketching exhibition at The Chair, but that is closing soon.

Hay Dragon

 I was told this lunch time that there was a new statue at the top of the car park, so this evening I went down to have a look:

It seems that Hay has a new dragon!  The sculptor is Danny Thomas the chainsaw man.

While I was in the area, I went up to the Castle Stables to the Tuesday evening market and picked up some potatoes and eggs.

I also had to inform a visitor that they had missed the last bus back to Hereford - so I'm not sure what they're going to do now....

Sketching at The Chair

 The Chair gallery has a new exhibition of local sketches by three different artists, some pen and ink and some watercolours. 

They also have a competition - they are giving out postcard sized pieces of paper for members of the public to sketch on, and the winner will have their sketch made into a postcard.  There are several entries to the competition hung up in the gallery already, and it looks like a fun thing to do.

Writing With Light

 I haven't been keeping up to date with events at the Castle, partly because I was away earlier in the month, but here's something that sounds exciting.

This weekend is Writing With Light.

It starts on Friday 23rd August, with a talk by Owen Sheer at 6pm followed by an indoor showing of his film Resistance at 7.15pm.

On Saturday there's a workshop on creating your own Booktok at 2pm with Elle Adams and Toni Cook. Then at 6pm Elle Adams presents Bookflicks.

At 8.30pm there's an outdoor screening of The Princess Bride!  Swordfights!  Pirates!  True love!  (I love this movie!).

On Sunday at 3.30pm there's a talk on writing music for film and TV, and at 8.30pm there's an outdoor showing of the film Jaws.

Bring your own seating to the outdoor showings - snacks and popcorn will be available, and the film will go ahead whatever the weather!

Latest River Test Results

 The latest news I've had on test results for pollution in the River Wye is that the Warren is safe for swimming at the moment.